One survivor of clergy sexual abuse reflects on her pilgrimage from despair to hope and a faith-filled meeting with the Pope.

My life has been a test of faith and strength. Like countless other individuals who have survived the trauma of abuse, I have fought through hard times and found myself waging a battle that often seemed unwinnable. At age 15, while working as a secretary in a parish rectory, I endured months of sexual abuse at the hands of the now-laicized Father Kelvin Iguabita.

Nothing could ever fully express the suffering, anguish and betrayal a victim feels. Only someone who has experienced abuse can fully understand the powerful manipulation of an abuser.

I had been raised in a Catholic home where prayer and the sacraments were a part of everyday life. I had never really doubted my faith until the...READ MORE

Young people who wish to pursue a religious vocations have assistance in paying off their debt thanks to a nonprofit society. Jan. 1 issue feature.

When Allen Alexander wanted to pursue his calling to the priesthood, which he had since he was a child, he was faced with a major obstacle: Even though he received some scholarship assistance and worked while at Franciscan University of Steubenville, he still had thousands of dollars of school debt to pay off before the congregation he applied to would let him enter.

When Amy Turner went on an Ignatian retreat while working at a Boston hospital and had plans to study to be a nurse, she realized “God gave me the desire for a vocation, and that was what I had to respond to.” But she still was paying off debt from the University of Dallas.

Sex-abuse settlements cost millions of dollars and many Church properties.

TUCSON, Ariz. — For more than eight decades, the centuries-old Pamplona Crucifix was on the wall in the vestibule of St. Augustine Cathedral in Tucson, Ariz., a battered and neglected gift from a forgotten donor.

Now carefully restored, the 12th-century artifact of medieval Spanish Catholicism has a new place, over the high altar of the Diocese of Tucson’s remodeled and renovated cathedral.

At a cost of $75,000, the restoration of the crucifix was only a small item in the diocese’s $28 million “Our Faith, Our Hope, Our Future” campaign. However, as a symbol for a diocese recovering from scandal and bankruptcy, it has become something greater.

A Different Kind of Catholic Candidate

When Rick Santorum came in a close second to Mitt Romney in the Iowa Caucuses on Tuesday, Jan. 4, it was a surprise to pundits, who had only just started to consider him as a serious candidate in the crowded Republican presidential-nomination fight. And it could mark the emergence of a different kind of Catholic candidate in American politics, one who refuses to give up the fight on social justice — substantively and rhetorically — in practice and linguistics.

For someone who lost his last election by 18 points and literally raised his hand during a debate this fall to get a moderator’s attention, coming in second by eight votes against a candidate with much more money and organization...READ MORE

Holy Father speaks at first general audience of 2012.

VATICAN CITY (EWTN News/CNA)—The joy of the Christmas season is the unparalleled union of God and man, said Pope Benedict XVI at the first general audience for 2012.

“Humanity’s dream which began in the Garden of Eden, we want to be like God, is realized in an unexpected way, not through the greatness of man, who cannot make himself God, but through the humility of God, who came down among us in his humility, raising us to the true greatness of his being,” the Pope said to the 7,000 people in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall on Jan. 4.

This is the reason why “our first reaction to the birth of Jesus should be one of joy,” he said, because we now know “that God has assumed our humanity in order...READ MORE

Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles called the news “sad and difficult” in a Jan. 4 letter to the faithful, explaining that Bishop Zavala informed him in early December that he is of the father of two teenage minor children who live in another state with their mother.

Since 60-year-old Bishop Zavala submitted his resignation to the Pope, he “has not been in ministry and will be living privately,” Archbishop Gomez said. Bishop Zavala oversaw the San Gabriel Pastoral Region, which is one of five in the archdiocese.